News

Last Two Hanjin Ships Set to Call NY-NJ Port

Source: Journal of Commerce

October 20th 2016

The Hanjin Bremerhaven, just released from arrest outside the Panama Canal, is expected to stop at the Port of New York and New Jersey on Friday, the penultimate Hanjin Shipping vessel scheduled to berth at the port with cargo stranded by the container line’s financial disarray.

The 6,600 twenty-foot-equivalent-unit ship will arrive at the nation’s third-largest port at about 3 p.m. and dock at Maher Terminals in Elizabeth at about 5 p.m., according to the ocean carrier’s website.

The Hanjin Bremerhaven is the carrier’s fifth ship to unload cargo at the port since it filed for bankruptcy in a Korean court on Aug. 31. The filing plunged more than 90 ships operated by Hanjin Shipping into uncertainty, and stranded more than 500,000 containers around the world, as the company struggled to find the money to pay members of the supply chain to get cargo to its final destination.

The sixth and final Hanjin ship, Hanjin Chongqing, is scheduled to arrive at the port on Oct. 27.

The Hanjin Bremerhaven was originally scheduled to arrive at the Port of New York and New Jersey on Sept. 17, but was arrested at the start of October after traveling through the Panama Canal. It was arrested twice more before its release at the start of this week. AISLive, a sister product of JOC.com within IHS Markit, said the Bremerhaven was about 200 miles off the coast of North Caroline late Thursday morning.

The Hanjin Bremerhaven’s arrival follows the berthing Tuesday of another Hanjin ship that was previously arrested and held near the Panama Canal, the 7,500-TEU Hanjin Baltimore. It unloaded 1,500 containers at Maher Terminals and then moved to Global Container Terminals in Bayonne to unload 200 more containers.

The Hanjin Baltimore stopped at both terminals to avoid any problems passing under the Bayonne Bridge.

The bridge is too low for larger ships to pass under without being weighed down with cargo, but vessels must do so to get to Maher Terminals, the only one of the port’s four main terminals with a regular Hanjin call. Port officials worried that if all the containers were removed from the vessel at Maher Terminals, the ship would be too high to go under the bridge on departure.

A similar two-terminal unloading pattern was adopted by the 9,000-TEU Hanjin Switzerland when it stopped at the port on Oct. 13. Prior to that, the 7,500-TEU Hanjin Miami on Sept. 20 stopped only at Maher Terminals, but on departure was loaded with empty containers from other carriers to reduce its height and ensure it could pass under the bridge.

The 4,600-TEU Seaspan Efficiency, which at the time was under charter to Hanjin, docked at Maher Terminals Friday night.